My 1992 Taurus needs a new radiator, but I won’t be able to afford one before November. Meanwhile, every morning I refill the radiator with tap water from a gallon jug that had coolant in it. ( The radiator leaks; I can’t afford to refill the radiator with coolant.)
The fluid bubbles as I pour it in; is there a way to do this and be sure I’ve filled the radiator ( the system holds three gallons according to the manual)?
Do you have the engine running while you’re filling the radiator (not while it’s hot, though)? This ensures that the water pump is circulating the water and minimizes the likelihood of air pockets.
I see that the 92 Taurus had an iron block, so perhaps you can get away with using water from the tap for a while. Once the leak is dealt with, you really need to suck it up and put actual coolant in.
To keep it going for a few months you’ll be OK, I’ve done it. The bubbles you see are air pockets in the radiator or engine working their way out. You might trying squeezing the upper radiator hose to work more air out in order to fill the radiator totally full.
Also fill the overflow tank. Even with a small leak, a hot system will suck water out of the overflow back into the radiator as the engine cools down after running.
Don’t let it go until freezing weather or you’ll have a really bad day! Or keep adding a little antifreeze.
Guy lives in Southern California, Los Angeles, beach cities.
I don’t think freezing weather is going to be an issue.
The freeze plugs might turn out to be, though, dougie_monty. If those are made of aluminum, then tap water isn’t doing them any good.
But it’s not circulating until the thermostat opens.
I’ve had luck squeezing the upper radiator hose. That moves some of the water around. Fill it up, squeeze the hose a few times and if air bubbles out and the level drops, add some more water.
Kaylasdad is right; freezing is not an issue; I haven’t lived where it freezes since 1952, when I was 3 years old.
As for aluminum freezer plugs, last I heard aluminum is resistant to corrosion, more so than iron.
And I am not so destitute than I cannot eventually buy a gallon of store-bought radiator coolant. Repairs are about two weeks away and I keep at least three full gallon jugs of water stored in the trunk and the tap at the back of my driveway is always available. 
My trips are not very long, and in fact when I had to go to the dentist in Long Beach (ten miles each way) the other day, I rode buses and the Blue Line; the car stayed home. No sense taking chances.
The thermostat housing is often higher than your radiator cap so you need to loosen the screw on the housing to completely fill the cooling system.
Isn’t there some gunge that you can put in to seal up minor leaks? I seem to remember eggs being suggested but that it was also considered a bad idea.
Don’t know if it’s still true, but anti-freeze used to kill animals because it was sweet and attracted them.
I got a stop-leak at Pep Boys and have used it. Doesn’t seem to help. Besides the radiator itself, there’s a hose with a smaller bore that one mechanic said may also be leaking; it is rather convoluted and the other end is really hard to get to.
Boiling over could be, though. Anti-freeze raises the coolant’s boiling point as well as lowering the freezing point. That could be especially problematic if the system also isn’t holding pressure due to the leak (or a radiator cap that hasn’t been replaced since the Clinton administration) which could lead to boiling over in the unlikely event he gets stuck in traffic in Southern California.
Frankly it looks like the summer heat is over in LA so I would sweat it boiling over if it didn’t boil over during the last few weeks in the 100+ weather we had.
Straight water, while not good probably won’t do any harm over a 2 week span. It when you run nothing but water for extended periods of time that damage occurs.
Oh and your freeze plugs are probably steel unless switched when I wasn’t looking.
I’ve had the radiator cap for a couple of years–relatively short time. The mechanic I spoke to urged me not to screw it on all the way–that was apparently causing a leak too.
The pressure in the system provides greater boil protection than the glycol.
Unless your area is known for especially hard water, I’d just use straight tap water since freezing isn’t an issue right now. For the short duration you plan to use it, I don’t see no problem. Your freeze plugs will be fine, regardless if made from steel, stainless steel, aluminum or brass. Most in my area (north TX) including the mechanics use tap water all of the time, but mix it with a antifreeze mix since we do start getting freezes around November, and it’s supposed to help more with corrosive resistance over a long period of time. After you get the leak fixed, you might start going over to distilled water and a antifreeze mix, which may give it a bit more corrosive resistance, just depends on how good or bad your tap water already is. It your tap water was somewhat good to begin with, it may be marginal.
Don’t know about the stop leak you used at Pep Boys. I’ve used Bar Leak before, and it works, perhaps a bit too good! It’s cheap, but kind of risky. On old radiators, their passages often are a bit clogged over time already. I’ve used it to stop a good sized cylinder leak before on a 15 year old vehicle, but it also clogged up my old radiator. Replaced the radiator, and got many more years of use out of my vehicle with the cylinder head leak never coming back.
^^^
My post will read better by adding, that was a cylinder head gasket leak I fixed with Bar Leak.
I can’t vouch for the authority of this procedure to “burp” the cooling system in a Taurus, but it is consistent with a number of others I was able to Google up.
FWIW, the stop-leak I used was Valvoline, a Texaco brand. A pint bottle. I’ve used almost all of it.
Valvoline is motor oil.
THIS Valvoline ain’t! I know the difference between motor oil and stop-leak! And motor oil doesn’t come in little pint bottles–especially bottles labeled “radiator stop-leak”! :rolleyes: